Life After Death

How many atheists here, though not believing in God, Satan, heaven or hell, still believe in some kind of conscious existence after death ? Anyone ? I, for one, do not believe in any kind of conscious existence after death. Death is the end.

Nerdlass, I have had a great time imagining my celebration-of-life-gathering with all my family and friends to hear the usual "Jesus is the way, truth, and light" sermon and hear, instead, a physicist, an astrophysicist, a quantum physicist and bioastroquantumphysicist talk about what it means to be alive and dead, what happens to our atoms, and the meaning of immortality.

"Where are the smelling salts?"

They hear energy has not died, that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed, all my energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was me remains amid energies of the cosmos, I gave as good as I got.

We're not even the length of a sneeze, in the long term of things... I think it boils down to... enjoy the time you have here... try to be considerate to those who share this rock and will come after... that sort of thing. I also seem to recall Dawkins talking about the odds of you being you or being someone else and taking that into consideration. We've won the lottery to be who we are and not someone else... Sorry that I don't have an exact quote handy.

We're not even the length of a sneeze, in the long term of things... I think it boils down to... enjoy the time you have here... try to be considerate to those who share this rock and will come after....

easily makes more sense than the ten commandments.

Dawkins' words intrigue me. I recently heard a Teaching Company course on consciousness and decided that the lecturer was trying to get to the market before a crowd of lecturers gets there.

Dawkins isn't trying to beat a crowd to the market, and you don't need an exact quote, but I'm wondering what he means with winning a lottery to be who we are and not someone else?

In using the word "lottery", I doubt that he was referring to the race-to-the-egg.

If either of my parents been someone else or parented me differently, I wouldn't be.

Are his words those of a man who still has the neuronal activity for "miracle" in his head?

Tain't easy to wipe that part of the slate clean.

Some people I know want to quiz me about atheism. I could do worse than take with me your words on a card.

Here's the Dawkins quote that I remember: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” ― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

I have always imagined creating a stable diet on which people could eat...by portions described on the bag. Human Chow...like the Purina brand of dog food. I feel there is a need for such a product. Something that would take all the guess work out of nutrition...reduce the whole decision to a single choice of servings. Two cups a day, if you want to have the minimum requirement for the sustanence of an adult and active person...more or less depending on your age or if you want to lose weight.

But I was always stymied by whether or not I could get the copyright for the name I would want to use:

I guess if you want to be a gigantic ass about you could go up to grieving people and slap them in the face like that but there are far more elegant ways to talk about people who have ended their existence then what you are describing.